(no subject)
Summary: Galen Tyrol, fundamentally, enjoyed the life the Gods had gifted him with.
He loved the hard, nutmeg and caraway candies his grandmother made in batches of 144 pieces every third Wednesday of the month.
The words of the Lords of Kobol drifted from his tongue with less awe than pleasant comfort.
The hum of an engine in perfect alignment purring along a road brought an involuntary smile to his oft-smiling face.
His life was a safe groove of family and seminary and the hazy, burnt-umber future of the priesthood and the prospect of his own family.
Some notes:
The names for the cities on Gemenon are gacked hardcore from the Labors of Herakles (Hercules). This is just something in my head, whatever. Nothing important.
The names of the scrolls follow the same path as the Scroll of Pythia (which I assume is an allusion to the Python-the oracle of Apollo). Each of them is a bastardization of some oracle or figure related to fate.
The names of the festivals are real. Check, check it out: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/3310/festival.html#Pyanepsion
Alright then.
*
The gods shall lift those who lift each other.
The gods shall lift those who lift each other.
Once, when he was ten, Galen was lured by the mystery of what lay behind the fluttering, red iridescent curtains his mother disappeared behind to become The Oracle.
His father said, “Some knowledge lays beyond the ken of man, son.”
His mother said, “When you’re older, you can come to The Oracle, but I’d prefer you pick another Oracle, rather than your own mother.”
Galen heard the word oracle and imagined the lips of the Lords of Kobol pressed to the white curve of his mother’s ear, imagined the breath of the Gods stirring her light brown hair from her face. He was born with the smoke of incense in his lungs and the taste of sacrificial blood on his tongue. The lure of the Gods was too strong for him, and Galen had to see behind the curtains that changed his mother from Lydia Tyrol to Conduit of the Word.
The arcades of the Temple were his playground. No one stopped him as he wandered a long, looping path through the sculpted bay trees and wisteria bushes. No one saw him creep down the steps into the cave, his fingers trailing along the damp stone of the walls, his shadow blending with flickering shadows cast from below. The Lords of Kobol protected him as he pushed aside the red curtains and gazed with sinful eyes upon his mother seated on the sacred stool, her head bowed over a smoking brazier, her fingers oddly splayed and limp on her lap.
“Mo…” Galen began as his mother’s head lifted, the movement jerky, unnatural.
“Those who die are gifted with placid oblivion, but those who live are cursed with just that, the living on.”
Galen blinked. The voice rolling from his mother’s mouth echoed off the stone around them both--deep and resonant and very much not his mother’s. He was too scared to scream.
“Love is sometimes the gift you are given in order to survive the rest of what you must endure, and sometimes love is the punishment you must endure for the gift of existing at all.”
The voice fell silent. Galen felt lightheaded and opened his mouth to draw in a gasping breath. The sound brought his mother’s head around fully, and her eyes met his.
“Galen…” she began, reaching a hand out to him, with a stricken face, but he was running, running until he found himself in an automotive shop, looking at oil canisters, without knowing how he got there.
*
At sixteen, Galen declared his vocation, but to his father’s consternation and mother’s shock, he declared that vocation to be for Artemis. Not the Heroes his father served, nor for Apollo whom his mother spoke for. Galen would be a Melisson, bringer of light to the downtrodden, visitor of prisons, dispenser of food to the needy, hand of salvation to the indentured. His father said it was a betrayal of their values. His mother was frightened he’d leave Gemenon for Virgon.
The thought of leaving his family, while ephemerally appealing, wasn’t bearable, so Galen enrolled at the Douon Seminary in Erymanthia. He studied the Scrolls and the Gods in the tradition of Gemenon, but in his heart he always believed something in their fervor--their strictures and rules and absolutism--missed the intrinsic beauty of the orderly, awe-inducing, perfect universe Galen perceived the Gods had created.
*
By eighteen, Galen could recite the scrolls of Pythia, Calchia, Clothio, Lachesian, and Atropio from memory. The interpretations of those scriptures which his teachers reached, more often than not, made him have to bite back sarcastic remarks or to stifle laughter.
The scroll of Calchia said everyone has their gifts given by the Gods, and Galen’s was his ability to fix or improve just about anything. He could take a cheap chronometer and coax it into almost atomic precision. Just as easily he could listen to the troubles of his classmates and ease their burdens with soft words and practical advice.
The priests said he’d do well in a temple in a city, reminding the populace of the wrath of the Gods and taking in large collections. The more he heard “your future is bright, surely you’ll make Hierophant one day” or “you’d do well to keep your doubts to yourself, a doubter inspires doubt in others, and you want to inspire confidence, don’t you?”--his father and his instructors twisting his life into the shape they wanted for themselves--the more Galen retreated into the basement of the seminary to tinker with the air circulation system or into the garage to rebuild alternators.
Every Thursday night, he gave the offerings to Hermes at his grandmother’s home. She respected the old ways and opened her home to any travelers who happened across her property, the house set back from the road and surrounded by blood orange and pecan trees. The shrine to Hermes at the end of the drive alerted wayfarers that her home was a hospice and hospitality would be found there.
Galen prayed for the health of his grandmother, for the health of the three traveling students from Libris, for the President and Cabinet of the Colonies, for the continued peace and safety of all of the twelve colonies, and for the souls of the recently departed. The homey smells of roasted lamb, garlic, and rosemary carried his prayers up to the heavens. He gave the offering in his own blood-even though his grandmother always admonished him to take hers, to take anyone else’s because she hated to see him in pain, but Galen never took another’s blood unless forced to by the scowls and barked orders at the seminary. He nicked the inside of his wrist, one more mark next to all the others, and let his blood drop into the open flame of the worn stone altar in the kitchen.
“Hermes, carry our souls with you in your travels, safe-guard us as we safe-guard those in need of roofs or bread or love.” He pressed his thumb against the new cut, staunching the trickle of blood. His prayers were always heartfelt, genuine, full of awe and reverence even if the scrolls themselves filled him with annoyance and doubt.
When Galen turned from the alter, he saw one of the traveling students regarding him from the arched doorway leading into the pantry. He was used to offering his devotions at his grandmother’s without an audience. The blush rose so fast he was slightly light-headed, his blood rushing down his neck and up to his scalp.
“I’ve never actually seen anyone offer blood before. I thought that was an old wives’ tale.” The girl was dressed in loose, brown pants and a rust-colored tunic with starburst embroidery. She was barefooted. Black hair and dark eyes and caramel skin, what he had heard was typical Libris looks, but she was only one of the three he’d ever met from that planet. Her two companions were the others.
“We keep to the narrow path here.” Even with the bulwark of authentic belief, Galen couldn’t keep the sarcasm from the truism. The girl’s curious expression expanded into a wide smile, all peony lips and slightly crooked teeth and a toss of her shiny black hair.
“Just so you know, I’m a total atheist. My family doesn’t even have a shrine to the Gods in the house.” She shifted her weight from one bare foot to the other. He noticed she had a silver ring on her right second toe.
“A blank slate then. If I convert you I’ll get a toaster.” His easy smile slipped onto his face as his blush faded.
“Cylons aren’t the kind of gifts I prefer, but the Lords only know what you religious nuts get up to.” Laughter chased her words, his and hers both.
Dinner flowed past like all the important moments of a person’s life, unmarked at the time and laden with hidden meaning in the memory. They ate lamb and rice and the bitter salad greens his grandmother grew in her garden, with goat cheese and nuts. They drank strong wine and honeyed water. Galen’s grandmother told everyone’s fortunes one by one with a stick and a piece of twine. Galen laughed until the muscles on his ribs ached when the girls recounted their travels with the sort of ribald, sassy commentary he expected from Otherworlders---or from old women who have served out their religious obligations in the Temples of Aphrodite. Not unlike his grandmother.
The girl’s name was Anora Pulai. Her friends didn’t really matter.
*
The brightness of summer began to crisp at the edges, the harvest pulling men and women from their desks and computers to cut grapes and bring in vegetables and dance drunkenly in one festival after another. Gemenon’s calendar was the religious calendar, autumn brought Pyanepsia, Oskhoporia, Thesmophoria, Apaturia, and all the lesser, local celebrations. Fall on Gemenon was tourist season.
Anora’s friends left, begging off that the gaudy, loud crush of tourists was “inauthentic”. She stayed, settled in with Galen’s grandmother--taking in the homeless was a charism. Anora fell into the pattern of cooking and cleaning and canning the fruits and vegetables from the garden. The week before Pyanepsia, Galen came for dinner on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
He was out of school for the holidays. The Autumnal Festivals marked the end of one school year and the respite before the next.
*
His grandmother drove her car with the sort of blithe indifference most folk who assume machines work on magic tend to. Galen changed the oil, the spark plugs, the fan belt, the air filter. He jacked the body up and inspected the front axel. As he worked, he thought about the stains running up Anora’s fingers, over her hands and up her wrists from peeling baby beets. When he passed through the kitchen, she’d pushed her hair away from her face and smeared beet juice across her cheek. He got lost thinking about the beauty of the purple against her golden skin.
“Don’t tell me you’re handy.”
Anora’s voice shocked him, and he smacked himself in the cheek with his wrench. His eyes teared up as he shot out from under the chassis of the car.
“Frak!” He poked a finger at the bruise forming on his cheekbone.
Mud and loose dirt caked the knees of Anora’s loose pants that were probably once light grey. Her black tunic had absorbed whatever stains she’d accumulated there.
“Um…” she began before breaking off into laughter.
“What?” The question came out as annoyed as he felt.
“You curse?” She sounded so surprised, so genuinely shocked at that, that he burst out laughing in reply.
“What do they teach you about priests where you come from?”
“They’re all humorless freaks who want to figure out a new way to procreate that isn’t so much fun?” The words tumbled out with her laughter, but she broke off abruptly, looking concerned that she might have passed a line.
“Damn, I thought I did a better job of covering up my secret life of research into creating babies in glass jars. Sorry, but now you have to die.” He lurched forward to grab her ankle, smearing grease all over the top of her foot.
She danced away, laughing again. “Can I at least eat supper before I’m tossed onto the pyre? I’ve been slaving over it for hours.”
“Only if I get to eat, too.” She didn’t try too hard to get away, and Galen didn’t let go until he realized he could feel her pulse in his mouth.
*
His grandmother begged off after dinner to play a couple hands of Arches with her friends.
He offered to be Anora’s tourguide.
“Not everyone gets a priest to show them around the Gemenon Autumnal Celebrations. The Lords of Kobol heard my prayers.” Her smile told him she’d never prayed for anything in her life.
“I’m not a priest. Yet.” He blushed, because her smile turned sharper, meaningful, as though he’d just stepped into a trap.
“The scars on your hands and wrists say otherwise.” The smile vanished into an expression of open curiosity.
He could have waved off her comment, parroted verses from the scrolls about what, exactly, a priest was, but instead he met her eye, and he didn’t pretend to misunderstand.
“Most of them are from bits of metal and loose lug nuts.”
“There are different sorts of priests.”
*
Anora left a book laying face down, open, on the floorboards of the veranda. Galen knew it was hers when he opened it.
The stories of the founding of the 12 Colonies crept into the older religion of the actual Kobolians little by little over the three thousand years of the existence of the Colonies. Over time, the writings of the founders of the Colonies became the Scrolls of the Lords of Kobol and took on a messianic flavor that were never intended by the authors. This not only gives extra credence to writings that were either personal diaries or intended as historical accounts, but it also corrupted the preexisting and ancient religion of the Kobolians. All of this is, naturally, predicated on a belief the Kobol ever existed and that the Founding Myth is in any way accurate.
He’d heard whispers of these ideas, but he’d thought the existence of books purporting them had been made up by his instructors to construct an enemy, a specific threat to their faith.
Anora didn’t try to hide her approach. His back was turned towards her. She must have left the book on purpose. The anger flashed out of his chest and through his body. Anora was the easy target, but Galen knew she was the wrong one, or rather the easy one.
“Where did you get this?” He snapped the book closed.
“Aquaria’s full of nuts with tracts.” And that was not in any way an answer.
“What do you think about this?” The book made a solid thunk when it landed back on the floor.
Seconds ticked by as he kept his back to her, aware even then that his face laid him bare, that he couldn’t hide his thoughts from people.
“I think it’s more interesting what you think about the book.” Her hand pressed into his back between his shoulder blades, even splayed it didn’t span the distance.
“It’s obviously sacrilegious garbage.” He could hear the unrestrained anger in his own words, wished he knew how to control it better.
“Obviously.”
He’d never been good at lying, so he’d never done it much. She made him wish he’d learned to be better at it.
*
Pyanepsia
Galen nailed grape vines around the doors of his grandmother’s house as Anora watched, two bags full of recently canned vegetables at her feet.
“No big prayer thing?”
He looked over his shoulder at her, spitting nails out of his mouth into his palm. “You mean like ‘Lords of Kobol hear my prayer, please don’t let Anora insult the wrong person today?’”
“Yeah, like that, but with virgin sacrifice.”
He laughed before he realized that he shouldn’t.
“That comes later. First the parade of children, then we throw them in a fiery pit.” Frak it, he could laugh at himself, and besides, he made the same sorts of jokes with his friends all the time.
“Lords of Kobol, hear my prayer, let there be lots of nectar at this festival.”
He tossed the hammer onto the step, pocketed the nails, and reached down to pick up one of the offering bags.
“Oh, that one they always hear.”
The sun glanced off her hair, white on black like light from a void.
“Good, nothing washes down a virgin sacrifice like lots of alcohol.” She winked at him.
*
Anora wanted to stack the glass jars of beets and carrots and beans on the altar herself. Galen watched her ascend the rickety, wooden steps to the pre-fab altar. The vines and fruit boughs hid the shoddy construction and bare boards. The plywood stairs seemed to end at a floating garden stacked high with fruit and vegetables and preserved foods.
She placed the jars one at a time on top of others already there. So precise, turning each offering just so, stepping back and admiring her work when she finished. Her hair was bound with grape vines, tied back in a complex knot she’d paid a teenaged girl at a booth to do. The gold and maroon dress she wore allowed her to blend with the crowd-local dress instead of her usual Aquarian garb-but her black hair and dark skin marked her as the tourist she was.
Galen watched her descend the stairs and reached his hand out for hers as she stepped off the last one, unaware he was even doing it.
*
They ate at the smorgasbord like everyone else. The entire planet seemed to be packed into the picnic tables cluttering the streets of downtown Stymphala. Anora ate tomatoes and beans smooshed together, baked apples with cloves, and jiggled her leg nonstop against his.
The priestesses from the Temple of Apollo kept the wine coming. Galen didn’t cover his cup with his hand, even when he should have. Anora talked, about Picon and the moons of Tauron, about almost being arrested on Caprica for vandalism. The sky overhead bled from vast blue to cloistering purple, and Galen had a hard time believing there was more than Gemenon, more than the solid ground beneath him, the warmth of Anora beside him, the burning of the wine inside him in the whole of the universe.
“I was attending school on Caprica, when my cousins told me they were going to do the Colonies, I thought it was as good of an excuse to leave as any.” Her cousins? Oh well, he supposed he should have known that. He figured that everyone from Aquaria looked like Anora and her “friends”. He would have to reflect on his racism later.
“You weren’t interested in the law?”
She looked at him, and he twisted a little, just a little because the man next to him was boxing him in, because her look told him she thought his remark was stupid. “I wasn’t interested in being the sort of person who’s interested in the law.”
They’d switched from banter to something serious. He wasn’t in the mood for serious. Serious was what he did too much.
“Well then, I think enlisting in the Fleet is a perfect career for you. The military is totally law-free.” He took a drink of his wine as she poked him in the ribs, smiling.
“They have guns, though.”
His turn to laugh. “That’s what I hear.”
He got it, though. There was freedom and then there was freedom. She liked to travel, and the Fleet provided that opportunity in Reds. To her constantly moving was freedom, to him freedom was just a concept.
*
Oskhoporia
Galen and Anora were drunk at one in the afternoon sitting in the grass and watching people their own age dancing, weaving in and out of lines, ducking under arms, passing ribbons and flowers between them.
Anora had already fallen over twice, so they sat.
They both passed out, he realized when he woke and felt her head on his shoulder, her arm over his chest, one leg over his knee. The sun glared down on him. She smelled like oranges and wine.
“What’s it feel like to believe in the Gods?” The bur in her voice, the vowels cracking from sleep, made him want to move away, afraid she’d be offended by his interest.
“What’s it feel like not to?”
“I think you’re more likely to answer your own question than I am mine.” Her fingers plucked at the hem of his shirt until it came free of his pants. She placed her hand against his ribs, just gripped his skin.
“I have my moments.”
They lay like that for ages, just alive and drunk and together.
They broke apart when she announced an urgent need to relieve herself. He let her pull him along the sidewalk to the public facilities. He watched her stall as she relieved herself, naturally worried and alert for no real reason other than that’s who he was.
He pissed in the street when she called him up-tight.
“Is that a drag queen?” She pointed to an Oskhophoroi dressed in a tight leather dress, all zippers and snaps and ripped fishnet stockings.
“A sacred drag queen.” He broke out laughing, zipping up his pants.
“Ok, I am obviously really missing out here. I want to be a priest, too.”
Galen watched a cluster of Oskhophoroi capering about, tossing condoms at people, grabbing wine from people’s hands, generally causing mayhem. Anora’s hand was under his shirt again, and he thought that was the most natural place for it. He remembered when he’d been a Oskhophoroi the year before, about the constriction of the clothes, about how he’d thought it was an archaic, pointless act, how people didn’t even remember what the symbolism represented.
“Shhhhhhhhh, you’re thinking too loud. Don’t you know we’re supposed to make out now?” She didn’t give him a chance to be shocked or embarrassed-either for thinking too much or over her words. The hand on his belly curled so that her fingers grasped his waistband, and she tugged him forward.
Her mouth brushed his chin, so he bent down to accommodate her. His mouth was open before she even pressed her lips to his. She tasted like wine and promises and the unknowable future.
*
Apaturia
The Scroll of Calchia says one must actively choose Righteousness or Sin, one chooses to breathe, to eat, to wake in the morning, those choices are made either in a state of Righteousness or Sin, and only the Agent knows in which state he exists.
Galen called his father and claimed to have a flat tire and no spare. His lie came easily. His father offered to send someone after him. Then Galen told the truth. The truth came reluctantly. There was no lecture, just silent disapproval.
His grandmother had gone to Hippo three days before in order to prepare the children for Apaturia. She knew he wouldn’t follow that year. She’d smiled and shook a finger before kissing him on the forehead and leaving him twenty credits.
He hadn’t been properly dressed since she left.
Anora was surprisingly good at keeping the fire going in the fireplace. The chill had set in directly after Oskhoporia. All of the leaves were off the trees. It was the season of bonfires and family reunions. For Galen, the world narrowed to Anora and her easy laughter, her bitten fingernails and inability to remember vehicles needed fuel.
“You could come with me. You have marketable skills.” She said it ten times a day, and his reaction to her invitation had skipped from exuberance and need to indulgence and fear.
“I could be a chaplain…” He began to recount a fictional account of his future exploits when Anora slapped the joke out of his mouth.
“I’m fraking serious!” The fire backlit her naked body, the deep curves of her hips, the halo of her long hair. “Do you think I do this on every planet? Huh? DO YOU?”
As a matter of fact, in his worst moments, he did. In those moments when she slept and he watched her, his fingers in her hair, his throat tight and heart beating in his mouth, his terror-filled thoughts centered on exactly that-her with other men, a string of other men, the same way.
His pause stretched too long, and he saw the heat of her shallow anger deepen, turning to something closer to rage. She raised her hand again, and he caught her wrist.
“Frak you, how dare you? I love you, I’m in love with you.” Her voice flowed out low and even. The hairs on the back of Galen’s neck stood up. He suddenly realized she was dangerous, that maybe she was suited to the Fleet. He saw her in his mind with a gun in her hand, her face set like it was in that moment.
The floor seemed to fall away from him, because he knew he could never give her up, could never get over it, move on. This was what he’d been missing every minute of his life without even knowing it existed.
“I love you.” He said it like a prayer.
He looked back later, after Anora, after the Cylons, the Cylon, and he hoped it meant something important about him that those were the words that set him on the true path of his life.
*
*
Sarcastic accusations of being pedantic and predictable by Zahra. The name Anora also belongs to her, but I didn’t realize that until she mocked me.
Not betaed. eta: now with 60% fewer malaprops and homophone errors thanks to Vic. Wow, sometimes I'm sort of STUPID.
Anora Pulai who went on to become a communications officer on the Atlantia and died during the Cylon attack.
A few odds and ends:
pulai (really taking liberty with the transliteration here) is gates in greek
Melissa was the name for a priestess of Artemis
I just had a hard time wrapping my head around how a guy whose parents were both clergy ended up in the military--I really think he would be devoted to a goddess, that he would throw his whole life away for his first true love, and there's a whole part after this where he has a whole blow-up with his parents about Anora that leads him to make his real choice in anger, not as much from love, but I was tired of it all.
He loved the hard, nutmeg and caraway candies his grandmother made in batches of 144 pieces every third Wednesday of the month.
The words of the Lords of Kobol drifted from his tongue with less awe than pleasant comfort.
The hum of an engine in perfect alignment purring along a road brought an involuntary smile to his oft-smiling face.
His life was a safe groove of family and seminary and the hazy, burnt-umber future of the priesthood and the prospect of his own family.
Some notes:
The names for the cities on Gemenon are gacked hardcore from the Labors of Herakles (Hercules). This is just something in my head, whatever. Nothing important.
The names of the scrolls follow the same path as the Scroll of Pythia (which I assume is an allusion to the Python-the oracle of Apollo). Each of them is a bastardization of some oracle or figure related to fate.
The names of the festivals are real. Check, check it out: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/3310/festival.html#Pyanepsion
Alright then.
*
The gods shall lift those who lift each other.
The gods shall lift those who lift each other.
Once, when he was ten, Galen was lured by the mystery of what lay behind the fluttering, red iridescent curtains his mother disappeared behind to become The Oracle.
His father said, “Some knowledge lays beyond the ken of man, son.”
His mother said, “When you’re older, you can come to The Oracle, but I’d prefer you pick another Oracle, rather than your own mother.”
Galen heard the word oracle and imagined the lips of the Lords of Kobol pressed to the white curve of his mother’s ear, imagined the breath of the Gods stirring her light brown hair from her face. He was born with the smoke of incense in his lungs and the taste of sacrificial blood on his tongue. The lure of the Gods was too strong for him, and Galen had to see behind the curtains that changed his mother from Lydia Tyrol to Conduit of the Word.
The arcades of the Temple were his playground. No one stopped him as he wandered a long, looping path through the sculpted bay trees and wisteria bushes. No one saw him creep down the steps into the cave, his fingers trailing along the damp stone of the walls, his shadow blending with flickering shadows cast from below. The Lords of Kobol protected him as he pushed aside the red curtains and gazed with sinful eyes upon his mother seated on the sacred stool, her head bowed over a smoking brazier, her fingers oddly splayed and limp on her lap.
“Mo…” Galen began as his mother’s head lifted, the movement jerky, unnatural.
“Those who die are gifted with placid oblivion, but those who live are cursed with just that, the living on.”
Galen blinked. The voice rolling from his mother’s mouth echoed off the stone around them both--deep and resonant and very much not his mother’s. He was too scared to scream.
“Love is sometimes the gift you are given in order to survive the rest of what you must endure, and sometimes love is the punishment you must endure for the gift of existing at all.”
The voice fell silent. Galen felt lightheaded and opened his mouth to draw in a gasping breath. The sound brought his mother’s head around fully, and her eyes met his.
“Galen…” she began, reaching a hand out to him, with a stricken face, but he was running, running until he found himself in an automotive shop, looking at oil canisters, without knowing how he got there.
*
At sixteen, Galen declared his vocation, but to his father’s consternation and mother’s shock, he declared that vocation to be for Artemis. Not the Heroes his father served, nor for Apollo whom his mother spoke for. Galen would be a Melisson, bringer of light to the downtrodden, visitor of prisons, dispenser of food to the needy, hand of salvation to the indentured. His father said it was a betrayal of their values. His mother was frightened he’d leave Gemenon for Virgon.
The thought of leaving his family, while ephemerally appealing, wasn’t bearable, so Galen enrolled at the Douon Seminary in Erymanthia. He studied the Scrolls and the Gods in the tradition of Gemenon, but in his heart he always believed something in their fervor--their strictures and rules and absolutism--missed the intrinsic beauty of the orderly, awe-inducing, perfect universe Galen perceived the Gods had created.
*
By eighteen, Galen could recite the scrolls of Pythia, Calchia, Clothio, Lachesian, and Atropio from memory. The interpretations of those scriptures which his teachers reached, more often than not, made him have to bite back sarcastic remarks or to stifle laughter.
The scroll of Calchia said everyone has their gifts given by the Gods, and Galen’s was his ability to fix or improve just about anything. He could take a cheap chronometer and coax it into almost atomic precision. Just as easily he could listen to the troubles of his classmates and ease their burdens with soft words and practical advice.
The priests said he’d do well in a temple in a city, reminding the populace of the wrath of the Gods and taking in large collections. The more he heard “your future is bright, surely you’ll make Hierophant one day” or “you’d do well to keep your doubts to yourself, a doubter inspires doubt in others, and you want to inspire confidence, don’t you?”--his father and his instructors twisting his life into the shape they wanted for themselves--the more Galen retreated into the basement of the seminary to tinker with the air circulation system or into the garage to rebuild alternators.
Every Thursday night, he gave the offerings to Hermes at his grandmother’s home. She respected the old ways and opened her home to any travelers who happened across her property, the house set back from the road and surrounded by blood orange and pecan trees. The shrine to Hermes at the end of the drive alerted wayfarers that her home was a hospice and hospitality would be found there.
Galen prayed for the health of his grandmother, for the health of the three traveling students from Libris, for the President and Cabinet of the Colonies, for the continued peace and safety of all of the twelve colonies, and for the souls of the recently departed. The homey smells of roasted lamb, garlic, and rosemary carried his prayers up to the heavens. He gave the offering in his own blood-even though his grandmother always admonished him to take hers, to take anyone else’s because she hated to see him in pain, but Galen never took another’s blood unless forced to by the scowls and barked orders at the seminary. He nicked the inside of his wrist, one more mark next to all the others, and let his blood drop into the open flame of the worn stone altar in the kitchen.
“Hermes, carry our souls with you in your travels, safe-guard us as we safe-guard those in need of roofs or bread or love.” He pressed his thumb against the new cut, staunching the trickle of blood. His prayers were always heartfelt, genuine, full of awe and reverence even if the scrolls themselves filled him with annoyance and doubt.
When Galen turned from the alter, he saw one of the traveling students regarding him from the arched doorway leading into the pantry. He was used to offering his devotions at his grandmother’s without an audience. The blush rose so fast he was slightly light-headed, his blood rushing down his neck and up to his scalp.
“I’ve never actually seen anyone offer blood before. I thought that was an old wives’ tale.” The girl was dressed in loose, brown pants and a rust-colored tunic with starburst embroidery. She was barefooted. Black hair and dark eyes and caramel skin, what he had heard was typical Libris looks, but she was only one of the three he’d ever met from that planet. Her two companions were the others.
“We keep to the narrow path here.” Even with the bulwark of authentic belief, Galen couldn’t keep the sarcasm from the truism. The girl’s curious expression expanded into a wide smile, all peony lips and slightly crooked teeth and a toss of her shiny black hair.
“Just so you know, I’m a total atheist. My family doesn’t even have a shrine to the Gods in the house.” She shifted her weight from one bare foot to the other. He noticed she had a silver ring on her right second toe.
“A blank slate then. If I convert you I’ll get a toaster.” His easy smile slipped onto his face as his blush faded.
“Cylons aren’t the kind of gifts I prefer, but the Lords only know what you religious nuts get up to.” Laughter chased her words, his and hers both.
Dinner flowed past like all the important moments of a person’s life, unmarked at the time and laden with hidden meaning in the memory. They ate lamb and rice and the bitter salad greens his grandmother grew in her garden, with goat cheese and nuts. They drank strong wine and honeyed water. Galen’s grandmother told everyone’s fortunes one by one with a stick and a piece of twine. Galen laughed until the muscles on his ribs ached when the girls recounted their travels with the sort of ribald, sassy commentary he expected from Otherworlders---or from old women who have served out their religious obligations in the Temples of Aphrodite. Not unlike his grandmother.
The girl’s name was Anora Pulai. Her friends didn’t really matter.
*
The brightness of summer began to crisp at the edges, the harvest pulling men and women from their desks and computers to cut grapes and bring in vegetables and dance drunkenly in one festival after another. Gemenon’s calendar was the religious calendar, autumn brought Pyanepsia, Oskhoporia, Thesmophoria, Apaturia, and all the lesser, local celebrations. Fall on Gemenon was tourist season.
Anora’s friends left, begging off that the gaudy, loud crush of tourists was “inauthentic”. She stayed, settled in with Galen’s grandmother--taking in the homeless was a charism. Anora fell into the pattern of cooking and cleaning and canning the fruits and vegetables from the garden. The week before Pyanepsia, Galen came for dinner on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
He was out of school for the holidays. The Autumnal Festivals marked the end of one school year and the respite before the next.
*
His grandmother drove her car with the sort of blithe indifference most folk who assume machines work on magic tend to. Galen changed the oil, the spark plugs, the fan belt, the air filter. He jacked the body up and inspected the front axel. As he worked, he thought about the stains running up Anora’s fingers, over her hands and up her wrists from peeling baby beets. When he passed through the kitchen, she’d pushed her hair away from her face and smeared beet juice across her cheek. He got lost thinking about the beauty of the purple against her golden skin.
“Don’t tell me you’re handy.”
Anora’s voice shocked him, and he smacked himself in the cheek with his wrench. His eyes teared up as he shot out from under the chassis of the car.
“Frak!” He poked a finger at the bruise forming on his cheekbone.
Mud and loose dirt caked the knees of Anora’s loose pants that were probably once light grey. Her black tunic had absorbed whatever stains she’d accumulated there.
“Um…” she began before breaking off into laughter.
“What?” The question came out as annoyed as he felt.
“You curse?” She sounded so surprised, so genuinely shocked at that, that he burst out laughing in reply.
“What do they teach you about priests where you come from?”
“They’re all humorless freaks who want to figure out a new way to procreate that isn’t so much fun?” The words tumbled out with her laughter, but she broke off abruptly, looking concerned that she might have passed a line.
“Damn, I thought I did a better job of covering up my secret life of research into creating babies in glass jars. Sorry, but now you have to die.” He lurched forward to grab her ankle, smearing grease all over the top of her foot.
She danced away, laughing again. “Can I at least eat supper before I’m tossed onto the pyre? I’ve been slaving over it for hours.”
“Only if I get to eat, too.” She didn’t try too hard to get away, and Galen didn’t let go until he realized he could feel her pulse in his mouth.
*
His grandmother begged off after dinner to play a couple hands of Arches with her friends.
He offered to be Anora’s tourguide.
“Not everyone gets a priest to show them around the Gemenon Autumnal Celebrations. The Lords of Kobol heard my prayers.” Her smile told him she’d never prayed for anything in her life.
“I’m not a priest. Yet.” He blushed, because her smile turned sharper, meaningful, as though he’d just stepped into a trap.
“The scars on your hands and wrists say otherwise.” The smile vanished into an expression of open curiosity.
He could have waved off her comment, parroted verses from the scrolls about what, exactly, a priest was, but instead he met her eye, and he didn’t pretend to misunderstand.
“Most of them are from bits of metal and loose lug nuts.”
“There are different sorts of priests.”
*
Anora left a book laying face down, open, on the floorboards of the veranda. Galen knew it was hers when he opened it.
The stories of the founding of the 12 Colonies crept into the older religion of the actual Kobolians little by little over the three thousand years of the existence of the Colonies. Over time, the writings of the founders of the Colonies became the Scrolls of the Lords of Kobol and took on a messianic flavor that were never intended by the authors. This not only gives extra credence to writings that were either personal diaries or intended as historical accounts, but it also corrupted the preexisting and ancient religion of the Kobolians. All of this is, naturally, predicated on a belief the Kobol ever existed and that the Founding Myth is in any way accurate.
He’d heard whispers of these ideas, but he’d thought the existence of books purporting them had been made up by his instructors to construct an enemy, a specific threat to their faith.
Anora didn’t try to hide her approach. His back was turned towards her. She must have left the book on purpose. The anger flashed out of his chest and through his body. Anora was the easy target, but Galen knew she was the wrong one, or rather the easy one.
“Where did you get this?” He snapped the book closed.
“Aquaria’s full of nuts with tracts.” And that was not in any way an answer.
“What do you think about this?” The book made a solid thunk when it landed back on the floor.
Seconds ticked by as he kept his back to her, aware even then that his face laid him bare, that he couldn’t hide his thoughts from people.
“I think it’s more interesting what you think about the book.” Her hand pressed into his back between his shoulder blades, even splayed it didn’t span the distance.
“It’s obviously sacrilegious garbage.” He could hear the unrestrained anger in his own words, wished he knew how to control it better.
“Obviously.”
He’d never been good at lying, so he’d never done it much. She made him wish he’d learned to be better at it.
*
Pyanepsia
Galen nailed grape vines around the doors of his grandmother’s house as Anora watched, two bags full of recently canned vegetables at her feet.
“No big prayer thing?”
He looked over his shoulder at her, spitting nails out of his mouth into his palm. “You mean like ‘Lords of Kobol hear my prayer, please don’t let Anora insult the wrong person today?’”
“Yeah, like that, but with virgin sacrifice.”
He laughed before he realized that he shouldn’t.
“That comes later. First the parade of children, then we throw them in a fiery pit.” Frak it, he could laugh at himself, and besides, he made the same sorts of jokes with his friends all the time.
“Lords of Kobol, hear my prayer, let there be lots of nectar at this festival.”
He tossed the hammer onto the step, pocketed the nails, and reached down to pick up one of the offering bags.
“Oh, that one they always hear.”
The sun glanced off her hair, white on black like light from a void.
“Good, nothing washes down a virgin sacrifice like lots of alcohol.” She winked at him.
*
Anora wanted to stack the glass jars of beets and carrots and beans on the altar herself. Galen watched her ascend the rickety, wooden steps to the pre-fab altar. The vines and fruit boughs hid the shoddy construction and bare boards. The plywood stairs seemed to end at a floating garden stacked high with fruit and vegetables and preserved foods.
She placed the jars one at a time on top of others already there. So precise, turning each offering just so, stepping back and admiring her work when she finished. Her hair was bound with grape vines, tied back in a complex knot she’d paid a teenaged girl at a booth to do. The gold and maroon dress she wore allowed her to blend with the crowd-local dress instead of her usual Aquarian garb-but her black hair and dark skin marked her as the tourist she was.
Galen watched her descend the stairs and reached his hand out for hers as she stepped off the last one, unaware he was even doing it.
*
They ate at the smorgasbord like everyone else. The entire planet seemed to be packed into the picnic tables cluttering the streets of downtown Stymphala. Anora ate tomatoes and beans smooshed together, baked apples with cloves, and jiggled her leg nonstop against his.
The priestesses from the Temple of Apollo kept the wine coming. Galen didn’t cover his cup with his hand, even when he should have. Anora talked, about Picon and the moons of Tauron, about almost being arrested on Caprica for vandalism. The sky overhead bled from vast blue to cloistering purple, and Galen had a hard time believing there was more than Gemenon, more than the solid ground beneath him, the warmth of Anora beside him, the burning of the wine inside him in the whole of the universe.
“I was attending school on Caprica, when my cousins told me they were going to do the Colonies, I thought it was as good of an excuse to leave as any.” Her cousins? Oh well, he supposed he should have known that. He figured that everyone from Aquaria looked like Anora and her “friends”. He would have to reflect on his racism later.
“You weren’t interested in the law?”
She looked at him, and he twisted a little, just a little because the man next to him was boxing him in, because her look told him she thought his remark was stupid. “I wasn’t interested in being the sort of person who’s interested in the law.”
They’d switched from banter to something serious. He wasn’t in the mood for serious. Serious was what he did too much.
“Well then, I think enlisting in the Fleet is a perfect career for you. The military is totally law-free.” He took a drink of his wine as she poked him in the ribs, smiling.
“They have guns, though.”
His turn to laugh. “That’s what I hear.”
He got it, though. There was freedom and then there was freedom. She liked to travel, and the Fleet provided that opportunity in Reds. To her constantly moving was freedom, to him freedom was just a concept.
*
Oskhoporia
Galen and Anora were drunk at one in the afternoon sitting in the grass and watching people their own age dancing, weaving in and out of lines, ducking under arms, passing ribbons and flowers between them.
Anora had already fallen over twice, so they sat.
They both passed out, he realized when he woke and felt her head on his shoulder, her arm over his chest, one leg over his knee. The sun glared down on him. She smelled like oranges and wine.
“What’s it feel like to believe in the Gods?” The bur in her voice, the vowels cracking from sleep, made him want to move away, afraid she’d be offended by his interest.
“What’s it feel like not to?”
“I think you’re more likely to answer your own question than I am mine.” Her fingers plucked at the hem of his shirt until it came free of his pants. She placed her hand against his ribs, just gripped his skin.
“I have my moments.”
They lay like that for ages, just alive and drunk and together.
They broke apart when she announced an urgent need to relieve herself. He let her pull him along the sidewalk to the public facilities. He watched her stall as she relieved herself, naturally worried and alert for no real reason other than that’s who he was.
He pissed in the street when she called him up-tight.
“Is that a drag queen?” She pointed to an Oskhophoroi dressed in a tight leather dress, all zippers and snaps and ripped fishnet stockings.
“A sacred drag queen.” He broke out laughing, zipping up his pants.
“Ok, I am obviously really missing out here. I want to be a priest, too.”
Galen watched a cluster of Oskhophoroi capering about, tossing condoms at people, grabbing wine from people’s hands, generally causing mayhem. Anora’s hand was under his shirt again, and he thought that was the most natural place for it. He remembered when he’d been a Oskhophoroi the year before, about the constriction of the clothes, about how he’d thought it was an archaic, pointless act, how people didn’t even remember what the symbolism represented.
“Shhhhhhhhh, you’re thinking too loud. Don’t you know we’re supposed to make out now?” She didn’t give him a chance to be shocked or embarrassed-either for thinking too much or over her words. The hand on his belly curled so that her fingers grasped his waistband, and she tugged him forward.
Her mouth brushed his chin, so he bent down to accommodate her. His mouth was open before she even pressed her lips to his. She tasted like wine and promises and the unknowable future.
*
Apaturia
The Scroll of Calchia says one must actively choose Righteousness or Sin, one chooses to breathe, to eat, to wake in the morning, those choices are made either in a state of Righteousness or Sin, and only the Agent knows in which state he exists.
Galen called his father and claimed to have a flat tire and no spare. His lie came easily. His father offered to send someone after him. Then Galen told the truth. The truth came reluctantly. There was no lecture, just silent disapproval.
His grandmother had gone to Hippo three days before in order to prepare the children for Apaturia. She knew he wouldn’t follow that year. She’d smiled and shook a finger before kissing him on the forehead and leaving him twenty credits.
He hadn’t been properly dressed since she left.
Anora was surprisingly good at keeping the fire going in the fireplace. The chill had set in directly after Oskhoporia. All of the leaves were off the trees. It was the season of bonfires and family reunions. For Galen, the world narrowed to Anora and her easy laughter, her bitten fingernails and inability to remember vehicles needed fuel.
“You could come with me. You have marketable skills.” She said it ten times a day, and his reaction to her invitation had skipped from exuberance and need to indulgence and fear.
“I could be a chaplain…” He began to recount a fictional account of his future exploits when Anora slapped the joke out of his mouth.
“I’m fraking serious!” The fire backlit her naked body, the deep curves of her hips, the halo of her long hair. “Do you think I do this on every planet? Huh? DO YOU?”
As a matter of fact, in his worst moments, he did. In those moments when she slept and he watched her, his fingers in her hair, his throat tight and heart beating in his mouth, his terror-filled thoughts centered on exactly that-her with other men, a string of other men, the same way.
His pause stretched too long, and he saw the heat of her shallow anger deepen, turning to something closer to rage. She raised her hand again, and he caught her wrist.
“Frak you, how dare you? I love you, I’m in love with you.” Her voice flowed out low and even. The hairs on the back of Galen’s neck stood up. He suddenly realized she was dangerous, that maybe she was suited to the Fleet. He saw her in his mind with a gun in her hand, her face set like it was in that moment.
The floor seemed to fall away from him, because he knew he could never give her up, could never get over it, move on. This was what he’d been missing every minute of his life without even knowing it existed.
“I love you.” He said it like a prayer.
He looked back later, after Anora, after the Cylons, the Cylon, and he hoped it meant something important about him that those were the words that set him on the true path of his life.
*
*
Sarcastic accusations of being pedantic and predictable by Zahra. The name Anora also belongs to her, but I didn’t realize that until she mocked me.
Not betaed. eta: now with 60% fewer malaprops and homophone errors thanks to Vic. Wow, sometimes I'm sort of STUPID.
Anora Pulai who went on to become a communications officer on the Atlantia and died during the Cylon attack.
A few odds and ends:
pulai (really taking liberty with the transliteration here) is gates in greek
Melissa was the name for a priestess of Artemis
I just had a hard time wrapping my head around how a guy whose parents were both clergy ended up in the military--I really think he would be devoted to a goddess, that he would throw his whole life away for his first true love, and there's a whole part after this where he has a whole blow-up with his parents about Anora that leads him to make his real choice in anger, not as much from love, but I was tired of it all.